Clearing the Slate or: Thoughts of India

[herewiss13]

In recognition of the abysmal state of my self-chronicle, I hereby resolve to (at least partially) correct it. Especially since, on this occasion, I'd already written up some material and never posted it here.

August 2007, my company sent me to Pune, India to train up a group of new employees, who were to constitute a new branch of the department I belonged to. I work at a technical support call-center, doing the front-line dispatch and was, at that time, doing most of the training for our local new hires. The following were some notes I emailed home about the experience. They are somewhat truncated because I was too busy and/or tired to write much after the initial impression of the first couple of days.

According to German Time it’s 11:54am. By my internal clock it’s almost 3 in the morning and barring micro-naps, I’ve been awake for over 20 hours at this point, with about 5 hours of sleep behind me before that…so bear with me.

The transatlantic flight, in hindsight, was ok. During the flight, it was just endless. I got to sit next to a belligerent Russian gentleman who did nothing but complain to the flight attendants for the first three hours about the food (we were apparently served “50 cent spaghetti” and “horsemeat”) and about the superiority of European airlines…especially in ones ability to get free alcohol on such flights. He was not happy with United from the word go and if I’d actually cared by that point, it probably would have been professionally instructional to listen to the head flight attendant (who was eventually summoned) de-escalate him…or at least shut him up. I’d had enough by that point, though, and just cranked up the headphones.

…the weakness in my legs when we disembarked was disturbing, though. I’d gotten up once, halfway through, and shifted around a lot…I hadn’t expected that level of atrophy.

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The best of all possible venues for watching “Blades of Fury” is when stuck on an airplane for 11 hours with absolutely nothing better to do. In this venue, it was actually quite entertaining…if a little over the top toward the end.

We also got to watch “Fracture” where Anthony Hopkins plays another genius criminal-mind. I actually skipped most of it, but decided to tune in right at the end for the big reveal.

Hopkins says: “Yes, you have finally discovered the vital clue which proves I actually did it. And I confess: I did do it. But I’ve already been tried and found innocent, therefore double jeopardy protects me even if my wife’s corpse came back to life and testified against me.”

And then the hero says “Except for -- “…and the screen goes blank, the pilot announces we’ll be landing in about 45 minutes and we never learn what cunning exception to double jeopardy the hero was going to use to defeat Hopkins. Truly an example of Murphy at his finest.

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Germany is another country…and I’m not just talking about the language. I knew I was back in Europe when I saw beer and adult magazines being sold in airport kiosks. The smoking, however, came as more of surprise than it should have…I can only imagine what India will end up being like (although I do remember that my hotel reservation is for a non-smoking room. Language (and lack of puritanical commercial values) aside, Frankfurt is still very foreign. It took me three tries to figure out what gate I was supposed to go to and they won’t let me go to it, for some reason. There’s a checkpoint where I show them my boarding pass and they tell me to come back in an hour…twice. I realize I’ve got a long layover (4 hours) but I’ve never run into a post-security checkpoint before…or been disallowed from waiting at my gate. It’s a tad frustrating and very much like a Teutonic Limbo.

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All places are equally foreign to each other. Some places are more foreign than others. India is definitely one of the latter. The first thing to hit me was the atmosphere…even more palpable than Florida with its smoky-humidity, Mumbai’s air was thick (but not smelly, which I’d also been warned against). [Ed. Note: I'd done a similar trip to Florida in May. I live in the Pacific Northwest.] The airport was functional, but not decorative…and huge. Walking from the gate to the baggage claims took a good five minutes. I was heartened to pass a Subway, but it wasn’t in the same corridor, so I passed by. Customs was a breeze, no one even asked me if I was here on business or pleasure. Mind you, I’d filled out a card saying as much and handed to the gentleman at the desk, but still… *shrug* There was much construction going on at the airport, renovations and expansions, etc. but I didn’t get a true sense of being in a completely foreign country (beyond the signs all being in English and Hindi (and occasionally German due to Lufthansa) until I hit the main exist. There was a literal wall of people outside waiting for us…and most of them were holding signs. I cannot begin to explain the relief I felt at finding the one that had both my name and company misspelled on it. My bag was whisked from my hands and I was escorted to the far side of the parking lot. ____________________________

For some reason, despite research and reading, I hadn’t realized that they drive on the left side of the road in India, so that proved a moment’s disorientation. Getting into a car was quite nice, as I finally had all the elbow room I might desire. The drive took over 3 hours, so:

Impressions of the road:

We might have feral cats in Eugene, but multiple feral dogs took some getting used to.

As did the amount of car and foot traffic happening at 2am in the morning.

I’d been told the airport was located in the shanty-town portion of Mumbai. This is both true and not true. It is extremely poor, but the buildings more resembled storage units with garage-style doors in front than anything else. Grungy: yes. Flimsy: no. At first I took them for a stream of small business as each had a large placard about the door; but then the sheer volume of advertisement and the company descriptions (“Eye surgeons in a 12x12 room?) finally sank in and I realized I was watching a nearly unbroken line of billboards that had nothing whatsoever (or at least, mostly nothing) to do with the buildings underneath them.

Driving in India is everything I’d been lead to believe and more. The main highways are well constructed and bear very clear lane markers…but they are pretty much ignored save for when someone wants to pass you. At 2am in the morning, the roads are filled with a profusion of garishly painted mid-sized trucks…hemi-semis, you might say and each one had painted on the back “Honk Please, OK.” You came up behind someone, you flashed your hi-beams and they moved to one side. If they didn’t, you used your horn and slowed down until they did. And it wasn’t just the trucks. I saw cars and jitneys (my word for a motorcycle/VW Bug hybrid) using lane markers as guidelines and and driving straight down the middle of them…until we came up from behind and they moved over into their “actual” lane. The clearance was often miniscule and tail-gating (even by my own, apparently lane-conscious driver) rampant.

For the most part, driving on the highways wasn’t too bad. West-bound traffic was segregated onto its own road and so everyone we saw was moving the same direction. Once we hit smaller roads, things became more nerve-wracking. Each car drifted toward the middle and only when approached head-on did each vehicle drift back to its own side. It felt like continual bouts of chicken and I finally had to stop watching ahead of us. There is no clear-cut distinction (at least at 4am) of “rich” and “poor” areas of town. It all looks fairly third-world with sharp little invasions by shiny corporate buildings like the Commercial Park or the Sun-n-Sand Hotel. Despite looking at Google-maps several times, I was only able to get a vague sense of orientation. The hotel seems like it’s in a different place than it should be, but since they had my reservation, I can hardly argue. ____________________________

The Sun-N-Sand is posh; frankly, too posh for me. My car door was opened for me and I was saluted. Someone grabbed both my backpack and duffel (I managed to hang onto the computer bag) and lead me into the lobby…which is enormous. At check in, I was asked for my passport and business card and I was forced to confide that I didn’t have any cards. The menus are just familiar enough not to be utterly foreign and I think I should be able to stave-off both food poisoning and starvation with a mixture of waffles and deep-friend chicken (we can hope). [Ed. Note: Waffles with “pancake sauce” became a staple of the diet.]

I spent the entire day asleep, so I haven’t done any exploring yet. I have been woken up twice, despite the do-not-disturb sign, by phone calls asking if I wanted me room tidied up. That’s cost them points. As has the fact that everything is still extremely humid even with the AC at full blast. It’s not very powerful. The room has a hi-speed connection to the net, which I had to pay for, but no wireless…which I’d been expecting. Since I’m only here until Wednesday Morning, I don’t plan to get too comfortable. Unpacking will _definitely_ happen at the Taj. [Ed. Note: due to booking issues, I had to switch hotels mid-way through my stay…it was either that or the Pune equivalent of a Motel 6 for 2 weeks, which was not happening.]

I’ll be very interested to see what the Taj Blue Diamond is like in comparison.

Still and all: it was a very welcome end to a very long trip. And while I slept through the meal service, that belligerent Russian was at least somewhat correct: the seats on Lufthansa are better than United’s. I think I can say this without bias despite not having someone seated next to me during the flight, but that fact may be influencing my judgment.

Time spent in transit: Friday 9am – 12am: 15 hours Saturday: 12:am -5pm: 17 hours

[Ed. Note: all of which was overtime. :-)]

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Pune is a garden gone to seed. Wherever there is empty ground, wild green growth overruns it, the trees are shaggy and unkempt, woven round with thick strangler figs and all the sheds and outbuildings are overshadowed. The buildings are not shiny, they are matte and all are surrounded by the fences of the yard.

Despite the forecasts, there is no rain. I see its evidence: puddles, droplets on cars, but am not a direct eyewitness. I hadn’t realized there could be such things as discreet downpours.

Outside my window a dozen hawks with forked-tails swoop and gyre, occasionally meeting with each other in a brief aerial tussle. A dozen dozen more float in the distance. As one swings close, the pigeons, avatars of the mundane, scatter.

Twice a fruit-bat, with golden ruff, flies past, unconcerned by its avian brethren. A bat in flight looks nothing like a bird, looks like nothing else….and has very little in common with the small, nervous, flittery things we call bats in the States. I’m told in nearby orchards they can be found in the thousands. I can scarcely imagine the sight.

Add to hawks, bats and dogs the cows of India. Three separate Brahma cows on the way to work yesterday, idling by the side of the road and a small herd of water buffalo being chivvied down the street on the way back. These are not sights you expect in the presence of multi-storied buildings yet, nonetheless, there they are.

I’ve seen true shanties now, I pass them on the way to work: canvas and corrugated tin, deep in the heart of the city, within blocks of the finest hotels. There is no economic segregation here by distance…the rich and the poor co-mingle, kept apart only by servants, doors and high walls. Everything is walled. There are no sidewalks, only gutters. No store-fronts, only booths and rows upon rows of “hole in the wall” stores. My initial estimate may have been in error…most of those storage-unit type buildings _are_ groups of small businesses…even travel agencies and other occupations we wouldn’t expect.